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Topic: Pékin Express 2012 (Read 23966 times)

jude defensor @judefensorKinda dissapointingly ironic to be checking into the Peninsula now that the Bourne crew has checked out! Rotten timing!28 min ago

jude defensor @judefensor...and just as I was whining about missing the Bourne gang, I bump into the cast & crew of the French Amazing Race!12 min ago

I'm assuming from the timing that he saw the cast and crew at the Peninsula Hotel. I believe the next in the series of Jason Bourne movies has been shooting in the Philippines and that is what he is referring to as the Bourne Gang and Crew.

The Peninsula Hotel is about 400-500 meters away from where they were shooting, so if the Ayala Triangle was the pit stop, the Peninsula would be a likely place to have everybody stay. Though, as a 5 star hotel, it probably isn't cheap to stay there. In that case, he could have dropped his bags in his room and left the hotel and seen them in the park.

A girl named D大调Laura from Weibo said she saw TAR filming in Manila Cathedoral,Manila yesterday...

Really? How come I did not see them? Manila Cathedral is inside Intramuros so I think it's a possible location.

From the news stories, this is supposed to be the last day of filming in the Philippines and I believe they are headed for Australia, so it makes sense they would be filming somewhere in Manila today as the first part of the leg before they leave the country.

OK, I have some good news and bad news. The day before yesterday I found some tweets that indicated where Pekin Express was filming in Las Pinas (put a ~ over the n) about 8 hours or so before they were seen in Ayala Triangle:

I did some research on Sarao Motors and found out that it's a factory in Las Pinas that makes jeepneys, the colorful small buses that provide local public transportation in much of the Philippines. I also found about 165 pictures taken during the setup of the leg and while the teams were running the leg. An absolutely amazing find! This is the good news. Now for the bad news. Unfortunately, I was at work and couldn't deal with that volume of data. So, I recruited a couple of helpers, who also proved to be at work or otherwise busy. By the time we were able to tackle grabbing all the pictures, they had been taken down. We did end up with 5 pictures that I'll post below, but what we didn't get was MUCH MUCH more interesting. I feel kind of bad, because that was about the best find I've made here for RFF and I let it get away. I dropped the ball when I didn't try getting some of the best ones when I had the chance after work.

Anyway, from the evidence in the pictures, the race was down to four teams at this point. The jeepney construction yard was set up with a number of items like old tires and colored ropes were threaded around, under and through the items. One person from each team appeared to be following the ropes over obstacles that included at least one teeter totter like board. Whether they were threading a ring along the rope or trying to unsnarl and free their color rope (red, green, blue and yellow I think), I couldn't say. The person doing the task was also carrying a big sponge for some reason. After they finished that, they moved back towards the entrance to the yard and helped push a jeepney out into the yard where a large crowd of people climbed on board, filling it to capacity and then some. Each team appeared to hop on to the back of the jeepney and hung on as the jeepney left the factory for some unknown location. The camera and sound guys followed as passengers on motor scooters being driven by local drivers.

The pictures we got are from the setup before the leg. I will mention that there were 4 or 5 pictures that appeared to show debris high in the air. I'm guessing those were balloons or kites over the yard. Whether they factored into the task, I don't know.

I think I've found a couple of sightings of Pekin Express south of Brisbane, Australia on Facebook. I'm a bit puzzled because I thought the final leg was in Sydney and they are 800 km (500 miles) to the northeast of Sydney. It does appear that they are asking people for rides, so that would go along with hitchhiking, as I understand they do on Pekin Express. It could also be the Norwegian TAR though. Or something local that we're not interested in at all.

From Facebook (including replies - names removed as RFF prefers):

Sighting 1

Just got hit up by tv crew to drive them out to nimbin in some como like the amazing race. Told em to beet it and smoked it up hahhaha Share ˇ about an hour ago via mobile ˇ 3 people like this.

hahahah where about an hour ago

Like out the front of the impy lol if it was somewhere closer i woulda done it lol i said yes and then i was like nah fuk that way to far out haha about an hour ago

hahaahaha should of got some money for it about an hour ago

Sighting 2

filling the car up at yatala, then some chick from The Amazing Race ask us for directions. randomShare ˇ about an hour ago near Melbourne, Victoria ˇ 4 people like this.

very random about an hour ago

i dont know why it says near melbourne about an hour ago

U should of sent here to cunnamulla about an hour ago

Lol was gonna say that Kane! about an hour ago

yeah hopefully im on tv. i said the car was stolen lol about an hour ago

Hahahaha be funny ass if you were 50 minutes ago

Nimbin is a village 779 km (484 mi) NE of Sydney and 181 km (112 mi) S of Brisbane. From Wikipedia:

Nimbin is notable for the prominence of its environmental initiatives such as permaculture, sustainability, self-sufficiency as well as the cannabis counterculture. Writer Austin Pick described his initial impressions of the village this way: "It is as if a smoky avenue of Amsterdam has been placed in the middle of the mountains behind frontier-style building facades. ... Nimbin is a strange place indeed."

Nimbin has been described in literature and mainstream media as 'the drug capital of Australia', 'a social experiment' and 'an escapist sub-culture'. Nimbin has become an icon in Australian cultural history with many of the values first introduced there by the counterculture becoming part of modern Australian culture.[3]

Yatala is a suburb in the outer northern areas of Gold Coast City in Queensland, Australia. It is 39 km (24 mi) south of Brisbane. Facebook has the Sighting 2 guy who saw them in Yatala listed as being near Melbourne, which puzzled the guy. Don't know where sighting 1 happened.

That's got me confused too. Maybe some kind of weird connection between legalized marijuana in Amsterdam and the marijuana culture in Nimbin? It is the Dutch version of TAR. It still seems pretty far fetched to me.

OK, here's two more sightings around Brisbane from Facebook. Both of these are earlier than the sightings above.

How exciting today at work couples were running through the airport with such excitement with camera crew racing behind.. THE AMAZING RACE(france) pitstop was there !! keep an eye out for me and <co-worker name> on French TV Share ˇ about an hour ago ˇ

10 people like this.

Oh I'm so Jelly!! about an hour ago

This person works for Singapore Airlines at the Brisbane Airport. She says it was a pitstop, but I doubt that's the case. More likely it was their arrival from Manila. That certainly would be a first if they had a pitstop at an airport, especially the final one.

I get a couple from the french amazing race a lift to emumdie yeah man and there like the French ppl would love you in France #blushes#Share ˇ 8 hours ago near Noosaville, Queensland ˇ

I can't find an Emumdie in Australia (or anywhere else). The guy who sent this lives in Noosaville, a suburb of Noosa. Noosa is located about 130 kilometres (81 mi) north of Brisbane in the Sunshine Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia. I do get hits for Eumundi, which is not far from Noosa. Eumundi is a small town with 1700 residents in the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland, Australia, 21 km south-west of Noosa Heads and 118 km north of the state capital, Brisbane.

It looks like they went north of Brisbane after leaving the airport and have then gone south of Brisbane.